Marlins Giving Player His First At-Bat, Seven Years Later

It is the fundamental rule of baseball: everybody gets a turn. Even the greatest hitters come to bat only one time through the order. When the manager calls your name, you get a chance to stand in the box, stare down the pitcher and do something.

Adam Greenberg got the call in the top of the ninth inning in Miami on July 9, 2005, as a pinch-hitter for the Chicago Cubs. But he never really had a chance. The first pitch he saw was a 92-mile-an-hour fastball from Valerio de los Santos, and he did not see it long. It struck him just below his right ear.

“I lost control of my eyes and thought my head was split open,” Greenberg said Thursday. “I kept saying, ‘Stay alive,’ and just repeated that. That will never leave me. But it doesn’t haunt me.”

Greenberg sustained vision problems and vertigo. He played 674 more games through 2011, all in the minors and most for the independent Bridgeport Bluefish in Connecticut, his home state.

But his next game will be Tuesday for the Miami Marlins, against the Mets.

The Marlins signed Greenberg to a one-day contract Thursday, an uplifting story for a team that needs one. The Marlins opened a new ballpark this season and increased their payroll, but they have fizzled on the field, lately dissolving into clubhouse bickering. Signing Greenberg changes the conversation, although there are bound to be skeptics.

The first question Greenberg took on a conference call with reporters Thursday was about whether he was subverting the system, theoretically taking the spot of a minor leaguer who might have earned it with his play this season. Greenberg called it a good question, and one he had heard since a filmmaker named Matt Liston started a campaign this year to get him one at-bat in the majors.

Photo

Adam Greenberg said he kept telling himself, "stay alive," after being hit by a pitch in his major league debut.Credit
Steve Mitchell/Associated Press

Greenberg, 31, said no major league team owes him anything. The Cubs — an also-ran, like the Marlins — had already rejected the idea of a late-season comeback. But he also defended his path.

“I got to the major leagues on my own merit,” said Greenberg, who most recently played for Israel in the World Baseball Classic qualifiers last week, which were held at the Marlins’ spring training site.

“I worked through the ranks, as a little kid and all the way up, and I earned that spot seven years ago,” he said. “So the fact is, this is not just my first at-bat — it’s not just, ‘Oh, poor kid, let’s give him a shot.’ I think this speaks a lot greater to the fact that I never gave up. I’m no different or special than anyone else.”

Baseball is not above such sentiment. Satchel Paige, denied his prime in the majors by the color line, was given the distinction of oldest player ever by tossing three innings for the Kansas City A’s in 1965, at age 59. Minnie Minoso batted twice for the Chicago White Sox in 1980, at age 54, so he could go down in baseball history as a five-decade major leaguer.

As second chances go, Greenberg’s is innocuous. Players, after all, get two chances to fail steroid tests before being barred for life. There is no harm in the Marlins giving Greenberg the chance that he earned, but never got, in 2005. He will give his one-day salary to the team’s foundation, which will donate it to an organization that studies the effects of brain trauma in athletes.

“Life’s going to throw you curveballs, or fastballs to the back of your head,” Greenberg said. “I got hit by one of them. It knocked me down, and I could have stayed there. I had a choice, and I could have said, ‘Poor me, that’s horrible.’ But I chose to get up and get back in the box.

“And that’s kind of the message to everyone: no matter what is going on in their own personal life, or anything, get back up, keep going. If you do that, good things do happen. Sometimes it takes seven years. But you know what? Anything is possible.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 28, 2012, on page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Marlins Giving Player His First At-Bat, Seven Years Later. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe